Hero Update: Rocky

Comments

Everyone's favorite adorable mushroom is getting a bit more terrifying, in fact, his Growth has already started! Rocky's full changes will be released tomorrow.

Changes:

Rocky will now be part of the "Plant" family! We realized there is only so much we can do with the "Mushroom" class, so we're building out a broader classification for him. Yes, we know mushrooms are technically fungi and not plants, just work with us here. :P

Rocky will have the "Rogue" tag.

Rockywillnowbefastbecauserockysgottagofast

Rocky will have the ability "Plant Growth", which increases Max HP and ATK at the end of each round. (Stacks up to 8 times. When a hero with Plant Growth moves from one room to another in a Campaign dungeon, they uproot themselves, setting their stacks back to 1 in the new room. Stacks are set to 0 on death.)

Rocky's "Spore Cloud' now gives Nature allies Haste, and gives Rocky and other (non-nature) allies a dodge buff for one round. It also triggers Growth on all Plant allies.

Rocky's "Mauling" is being replaced with "Sonic Screech", which is a Ranged Spirit attack that hits all enemies and silences the targeted enemy. This ability starts powered.

Rocky gets the passive ability "Fungus Amongus", which gives Plants a chance to apply poison when doing a basic attack. Chance increases with each stack of Growth.

Sonic screech appears to only hit 1 enemy (the targeted enemy to silence) and not all enemies as stated in the OP. The tooltip on Rocky's 2nd ability also does not say anything about hitting other enemies. Intended or bug?

Wish it would just be a 100% chance to silence without the chance to dodge.

On a larger note - the balance team just met to convene on Rocky. The intent was to provide Nature heroes with an extra attack and some avoidance (Dodge) and that Rocky and non-Nature heroes would get avoidance. Thus making a Rocky a new, useful option for both defense and offense strategies.

However, in our haste (no pun intended) to ensure that this was a useful option - we missed two considerations.

First, Dodge is negated by Freeze - we expected that to be a viable strategy - however, the Krexx/Reptile synergy completely invalidates this.

Second, the high Dodge bonus on Haste was meant for single target application - the only other normal group application (Zurk and Goblins) is largely non-impactful because the Haste is triggered by a Normal speed attack - NOT a Fast speed buff that allows a Defense team to utilize the benefit until they attack.

Rather than letting this sit over the weekend or until we improved other counters (like Perfect Swing heroes) - we want to address this immediately.

The plan is to significantly reduce the Dodge bonuses on both the Haste and Evasion components of the ability - note: these reductions will be specific to Rocky's ability (not global Haste/Evasion effects).

Also, since people would have "runed" Rocky (and likely Krexx and Viperia) differently given the original bonuses given by Rocky - we're also going to be turning on a free Rune-equip in conjunction with this change.

I'll update once we're closer to the release change.

The weekend is in a few hours in the UK...so is this coming in a few hours or in 24hrs...Trying to decide if i should save tickets until tomorrow or just use now in the current meta...@Eej. thabks

Sonic screech appears to only hit 1 enemy (the targeted enemy to silence) and not all enemies as stated in the OP. The tooltip on Rocky's 2nd ability also does not say anything about hitting other enemies. Intended or bug?

Wish it would just be a 100% chance to silence without the chance to dodge.
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The change will be Dodge% on both aspects (Haste/Evasion) will be 35% with the skill fully leveled - as opposed to 85/50 respectively.

35% is honestly pretty terrible : / (As are all things dodge related in a game with one hit kills dominating) It's not reliable enough to use on offense and it's high enough to make any defense who runs it a pure gamble a lot of the time which is neither a fun nor rewarding experience. The defense simply relying on bad luck to pull them a 25-30% win rate which is a net positive trophy gain.

The change will be Dodge% on both aspects (Haste/Evasion) will be 35% with the skill fully levelled - as opposed to 85/50 respectively.

35% is honestly pretty terrible : / (As are all things dodge related in a game with one hit kills dominating) It's not reliable enough to use on offence and it's high enough to make any defence who runs it a pure gamble a lot of the time which is neither a fun nor rewarding experience. The defence simply relying on bad luck to pull them a 25-30% win rate which is a net positive trophy gain.

Not sure they are hearing this Matt. Getting to the top 100 is based on streaks...streaks are based on not getting bent over by RNG*...adding more RNG is just, well, unhelpful.

We remain in the same boat so we are all suffering, but people are bailing...

Sonic screech appears to only hit 1 enemy (the targeted enemy to silence) and not all enemies as stated in the OP. The tooltip on Rocky's 2nd ability also does not say anything about hitting other enemies. Intended or bug?

Wish it would just be a 100% chance to silence without the chance to dodge.

Bug. We'll have that fixed early next week.

@Eej come on! How does that happen? Bugs like this are the reason we question your QA and testing.

Look the rocky dodge bug is real bad. I'm not entirely sure how testing missed that viperia and krex combined with rocky is just crazy broken now. It seemed obvious to a lot of your playerbase but I get that its at least a scenario test. All moves are working as described and yet things are clearly not functioning correctly when this combination of characters is put together.

But this bug? This is a junit. When I use skill two of rocky 3 things should happen:

Rocky attempts to hit his target

If target 1 was hit they are silenced

Rocky attempts to hit all other enemies

Is this a gamebreaking issue? No its not. But given the simplicity of the test none of us can explain how this update went out the door when #3 is so blatantly just not happening. It 100% makes us question everything about your development process. How could we not?

@MattCauthron , it's pretty clear the @eej and by extension boss fight does not listen, basically it's another week of oops sorry, we will fix this. Then completely disregarding any attempts at "fixing". It actually makes us look like idiots for constantly believing they have any interest in creating a fun game.

@MattCauthron , it's pretty clear the @eej and by extension boss fight does not listen, basically it's another week of oops sorry, we will fix this. Then completely disregarding any attempts at "fixing". It actually makes us look like idiots for constantly believing they have any interest in creating a fun game.

They obviously have a very vested interest in creating a fun game. It's what keeps the lights on. I think they probably have a very small team and are having to rush to get updates out on a timely manner (Mon/Thur events). They haven't done hero balance changes like this before in rapid succession, and with a small team it's really hard to properly predict everything it will affect. Add on top of that actually doing all the recoding (Which is probably a convoluted nightmare at this point) in such small windows is going to leave a high room for error.

@MattCauthron , it's pretty clear the @eej and by extension boss fight does not listen, basically it's another week of oops sorry, we will fix this. Then completely disregarding any attempts at "fixing". It actually makes us look like idiots for constantly believing they have any interest in creating a fun game.

They obviously have a very vested interest in creating a fun game. It's what keeps the lights on. I think they probably have a very small team and are having to rush to get updates out on a timely manner (Mon/Thur events). They haven't done hero balance changes like this before in rapid succession, and with a small team it's really hard to properly predict everything it will affect. Add on top of that actually doing all the recoding (Which is probably a convoluted nightmare at this point) in such small windows is going to leave a high room for error.

Totally agree that the code must look like a skyscraper built on quicksand by now. That being said a little more effort being spent on fixing known severe bugs before rolling out new items would go a long way. Why add a new floor to the skyscraper when the foundation is rubbish?

The fan base began with enough paitience to wait for repairs. Instead we were inundated with shiny new content left and right. A better long term plan would have been to rebuild while we were still willing to wait. Instead time and energy was spent on trying to cash in and keep people engaged via new broken heroes built on broken math. Now if repairs are started I am not sure if enough players are willing to wait it out.

Sonic screech appears to only hit 1 enemy (the targeted enemy to silence) and not all enemies as stated in the OP. The tooltip on Rocky's 2nd ability also does not say anything about hitting other enemies. Intended or bug?

Wish it would just be a 100% chance to silence without the chance to dodge.

Bug. We'll have that fixed early next week.

@Eej come on! How does that happen? Bugs like this are the reason we question your QA and testing.

Look the rocky dodge bug is real bad. I'm not entirely sure how testing missed that viperia and krex combined with rocky is just crazy broken now. It seemed obvious to a lot of your playerbase but I get that its at least a scenario test. All moves are working as described and yet things are clearly not functioning correctly when this combination of characters is put together.

But this bug? This is a junit. When I use skill two of rocky 3 things should happen:

Rocky attempts to hit his target

If target 1 was hit they are silenced

Rocky attempts to hit all other enemies

Is this a gamebreaking issue? No its not. But given the simplicity of the test none of us can explain how this update went out the door when #3 is so blatantly just not happening. It 100% makes us question everything about your development process. How could we not?

This post deserves its own thread. Sorry @Eej but things are getting pretty sad. Sometimes I picture you, Joel, and one overworked programmer all huddled around an computer from the 80's trying to remember the dos command to fix some ancient code that the game still runs off of.

Sonic screech appears to only hit 1 enemy (the targeted enemy to silence) and not all enemies as stated in the OP. The tooltip on Rocky's 2nd ability also does not say anything about hitting other enemies. Intended or bug?

Wish it would just be a 100% chance to silence without the chance to dodge.

Bug. We'll have that fixed early next week.

@Eej come on! How does that happen? Bugs like this are the reason we question your QA and testing...

...It 100% makes us question everything about your development process. How could we not?

Couldn't have said it better. Balance and interaction bugs/unforeseen results are forgivable to an extent. But something like this just shows that, inarguably, without a doubt, no comprehensive testing is done on their releases. The skill does not do what it is supposed to. That's inexcusable.

I'm sure everyone here would much prefer they slow down on this runaway train of new heroes, new epics, balance changes, etc. and instead take their time. Get what's already in the game working right. Fully vet new features before releasing. I bet doing so wouldn't even result in a lesser work output overall. I can only imagine half of their day is devoted to putting out fires and chasing bugs. Put in that same effort ahead of time so that your players don't have to deal with it.

@MattCauthron , it's pretty clear the @eej and by extension boss fight does not listen, basically it's another week of oops sorry, we will fix this. Then completely disregarding any attempts at "fixing". It actually makes us look like idiots for constantly believing they have any interest in creating a fun game.

They obviously have a very vested interest in creating a fun game. It's what keeps the lights on. I think they probably have a very small team and are having to rush to get updates out on a timely manner (Mon/Thur events). They haven't done hero balance changes like this before in rapid succession, and with a small team it's really hard to properly predict everything it will affect. Add on top of that actually doing all the recoding (Which is probably a convoluted nightmare at this point) in such small windows is going to leave a high room for error.

Look I hear you @MattCauthron , I do. I know refactoring and recoding in nightmarish code bases, believe me. And that's why I more or less gave them a resigned pass on the rocky dodge part. Testing isn't really going to catch something like that. Someone who is decent at the game needs to put together their knowledge of the available heroes and current meta and realize that rocky's new skillset in conjunction with these existing heroes is far more powerful then intended.

I actually had a whole response typed out to eej's post and I thought about it and deleted it. I do think it is a very good idea for them to take that day or two between when significant updates are announced on the forum and when they are released to reach out to their top players. I think pretty much anyone in the top 100 could've told you how they were going to change their defense based on rocky's update and let eej figure out that the freezing counter wasn't really going to cut it. But that process wasn't in place so I just hope its lesson learned for next time.

But I am upset about the sonic screech bug. That is exactly the kind of bug that completely erodes confidence in the playerbase. Eej and the team are working hard to get that confidence back. And that's great because I like this game and I want it to continue and for that they need that confidence. So bugs like "this just updated skill actually doesn't do what we said it does" are extremely upsetting because they are huge steps backwards.

cause now, you can make 100% dodge chance with people like shadowblade or aria

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The change will be Dodge% on both aspects (Haste/Evasion) will be 35% with the skill fully leveled - as opposed to 85/50 respectively.

35% will make Rocky useless again.

Well it will just make him useless for depending on the dodge. He will be plenty useful as another thing to cause broken mobile devices everywhere. Rng nightmare that you can't count on. Seems about right.

The change will be Dodge% on both aspects (Haste/Evasion) will be 35% with the skill fully leveled - as opposed to 85/50 respectively.

35% will make Rocky useless again.

Well it will just make him useless for depending on the dodge. He will be plenty useful as another thing to cause broken mobile devices everywhere. Rng nightmare that you can't count on. Seems about right.

It's unfortunately just really poor design. Eej states that it's okay b/c it's only one round but pvp matches are only one round. Sure it's useless on offense (May have some use with green allies at some point), but it will still be seen on a lot of defenses because you can still expect a fair amount of *I rolled dodge and one shot your team* wins.

The change will be Dodge% on both aspects (Haste/Evasion) will be 35% with the skill fully leveled - as opposed to 85/50 respectively.

I guess I will wait and see if this really impacts things but I doubt it. Again, heroes meant to be major damage dealers, like Koros or Viperia, should never be given any extra dodge chance. Even at "only" 35%, any attacker has to assume Koros or Viperia will dodge any fast round debuff or attack. None of the fast round attackers have perfect swing. 35% is still freaking high.

Totally agree with @CentralCommand. I have a degree in computer engineering and have spent all of my 15+ year career developing software.

This is basic: if you develop a function that says "x" is going to do "y", the absolute first thing that you would do after you complete your code would go be to ensure that "x" actually makes "y" happen.

Not making this happen would have given you a 0/100 grade on a sophomore level coding project at my school.

The change will be Dodge% on both aspects (Haste/Evasion) will be 35% with the skill fully leveled - as opposed to 85/50 respectively.

I guess I will wait and see if this really impacts things but I doubt it. Again, heroes meant to be major damage dealers, like Koros or Viperia, should never be given any extra dodge chance. Even at "only" 35%, any attacker has to assume Koros or Viperia will dodge any fast round debuff or attack. None of the fast round attackers have perfect swing. 35% is still freaking high.

Honestly, 100% or zero% would both be better options.

We live in a DB world where fast rogues like Kira have aoe attacks that can wipe a whole team and now normal speed heavy damage dealers have a 1/3 chance to dodge and destroy.

The change will be Dodge% on both aspects (Haste/Evasion) will be 35% with the skill fully leveled - as opposed to 85/50 respectively.

I guess I will wait and see if this really impacts things but I doubt it. Again, heroes meant to be major damage dealers, like Koros or Viperia, should never be given any extra dodge chance. Even at "only" 35%, any attacker has to assume Koros or Viperia will dodge any fast round debuff or attack. None of the fast round attackers have perfect swing. 35% is still freaking high.

Honestly, 100% or zero% would both be better options.

We live in a DB world where fast rogues like Kira have aoe attacks that can wipe a whole team and now normal speed heavy damage dealers have a 1/3 chance to dodge and destroy.

Yea I'm not really sure how much 35% changes honestly. Still means a defensive rocky will make opponents only send in koros since anything else is too RNG-y to count on connecting. And you can't count on his dodge on offense because there's too high a chance you won't dodge.

So with all the changes to rocky, is anyone going to let the non-forum users know WTF is going on, it's pretty appalling that you make changes to heroes and don't let your player base know what's going on, except if you knew this would cause an upheaval thus not letting people know the initial change and are hoping people will just have this blow over. So much for better communication and transparency. Not a single mention in game of rocky's changes.

So with all the changes to rocky, is anyone going to let the non-forum users know WTF is going on, it's pretty appalling that you make changes to heroes and don't let your player base know what's going on, except if you knew this would cause an upheaval thus not letting people know the initial change and are hoping people will just have this blow over. So much for better communication and transparency. Not a single mention in game of rocky's changes.

@MattCauthron , it's pretty clear the @eej and by extension boss fight does not listen, basically it's another week of oops sorry, we will fix this. Then completely disregarding any attempts at "fixing". It actually makes us look like idiots for constantly believing they have any interest in creating a fun game.

They obviously have a very vested interest in creating a fun game. It's what keeps the lights on. I think they probably have a very small team and are having to rush to get updates out on a timely manner (Mon/Thur events). They haven't done hero balance changes like this before in rapid succession, and with a small team it's really hard to properly predict everything it will affect. Add on top of that actually doing all the recoding (Which is probably a convoluted nightmare at this point) in such small windows is going to leave a high room for error.

I agree with every word. I understand everyone being upset, I am too, quite often, but I really believe they're trying hard to fix the game. I might be wrong, but so far, it looks to me like they're trying but don't have the time/resources to do so. Couple this with a very vocal and almost aggressive fan base, and you've got a recipe for chaos.

I get that 85% dodge is a little to high, but players basing their complaint on "I don't know if I'll win before starting the match, QQ rng" is funny to me. Even the top whales shouldn't be winning every match...a little randomness is a good thing.

That being said I do not enjoy pvp at all anymore, so anything that shakes the meta I'm all for. But with Koros, MK, and Shade around even these new changes/heros don't stop that train.

I agree with every word. I understand everyone being upset, I am too, quite often, but I really believe they're trying hard to fix the game. I might be wrong, but so far, it looks to me like they're trying but don't have the time/resources to do so. Couple this with a very vocal and almost aggressive fan base, and you've got a recipe for chaos.

Honestly I've been playing this game for 540 days now (barring some missed daily rewards) and yeah I'm angry, I'm angry that even if they have a small team they have a very dedicated base of players that they can bounce ideas off, yet they don't. They propose to fix issues starting with rebalancing heroes, then do is in a bungling way with no openness on the changes except for the minority of players who are on the forum, then reverse some of them still whilst not communicating it clearly. I've been pretty quiet up till the last few weeks because honestly I like the game I wouldn't be playing a mobile game for over a year if I didn't, I normally keep a game for two weeeks max. I see their inability to understand the resources they have and use them for the betterment if the game as nonsensical and foolish.

I think lily is a great character changing up some of the meta nicely, so not all of their choices are bad it's just their methods that are aggravating.

I dont why peoplel think the PVP can be balanced it can't. That is a general rule in gaming. There will always be something broken or better then everything else. Thats just how it works. And considering how small there team is i doubt that will change.

For those who don't believe my statement above ill gove some examples in some recent games

1. For Honor - Warden, Nobushi, and Orochi are stupid OP atm
2. FPS in general
3. Dark Souls PVP is imbalanced
4. EVERY FIGHTING GAME EVER
And many more.

So i say we give up all hope for PVP and shove sticks up our butts to entertain us instead.